Minimum Wage

August 10, 1989|By Warren Snyder.

EVANSTON — Why do people continue to write plugging for an increase in the minimum wage, when all economists explain over and over that it accomplishes one thing: It disemploys the low-paid worker, i.e., the black teenager. What purpose is served cutting people off the lowest step on the economic ladder?

How can anyone rise up the ladder if he isn`t on it?

If raising the minimum did anything good, we`d set it at $15 per hour and abolish poverty. Does anyone really think that would be the result? It would work about as well as passing a law that no one is permitted to be poor.